all ventilating panes, the size of ladies' handkerchiefs, smote
him with sensations of suffocation. Agatha'll like California, he
thought, calling to his mind visions of roses in dazzling sunshine and
the wealth of flowers that bloomed the twelve months round.

And then, quite illogically, the years were bridged and the whole leaden
weight of East Falls descended upon him like a damp sea fog. He fought
it from him, thrusting it off and aside by sentimental thoughts on the
"honest snow," the "fine elms," the "sturdy New England spirit," and the
"great homecoming." But at sight of Agatha's house he wilted. Before he
knew it, with a recrudescent guilty pang, he had tossed the half-smoked
cigar away and slackened his pace until his feet dragged in the old
lifeless, East Falls manner. He tried to remember that he was the owner
of Childs' Cash Store, accustomed to command, whose words were listened
to with respect in the Employers' Association, and who wielded the gavel
at the meetings of the Chamber of Commerce. He strove to conjure visions
of the letters in black and gold, and of the string of delivery wagons
backed up to the sidewalk. But Agatha's New England spirit was as sharp
as the frost, and it travelled to him through solid house-walls and
across the intervening hundred yards.

Then he became aware that despite his will he had thrown the cigar away.
This brought him an awful vision. He saw himself going out in the frost
to the woodshed to smoke. His memory of Agatha he found less softened by
the lapse of years than it had been when three thousand miles
intervened. It was unthinkable. No; he couldn't do it. He was too old,
too used to smoking all over the house, to do the woodshed stunt now.
And everything depended on how he began. He would put his foot down. He
would smoke in the house that very night ... in the kitchen, he feebly
amended. No, by George, he would smoke now. He would arrive smoking.
Mentally imprecating the cold, he exposed his bare hands and lighted
another cigar. His manhood seemed to flare up with the match. He would
show her who was boss. Right from the drop of the hat he would show her.

Josiah Childs had been born in this house. And it was long before he
was born that his father had built it. Across the low stone fence,
Josiah could see the kitchen porch and door, the connected woodshed, and
the several outbuildings. Fresh from the West, where everything was new
and in constant flux, he was ast